Blog

A Healthy, Nutritious, and Sweet New Year For All Children

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is an opportunity for us to express our support for important government programs as we look towards the year ahead. In the next year, Congress will need to address issues regarding reauthorization for child nutrition programs. While the programs are permanently authorized, Congress uses the reauthorization process to review the laws and re allocate funding when the laws expire. One existing law in this policy area – the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 – is set to expire on September 2015.

This Week at the RAC: Apply for Nothing but Nets Fellowship; People's Climate March

As we finish up the last full week of our Jewish year, it’s been typically hopping at the RAC. Our program team of Michael Namath, Shira Zemel, Daniel Landesberg and Ariella Yedwab spent three days at the URJ’s Kutz Camp brainstorming, role-playing and case-studying along with the URJ’s Youth Division Staff, all with an eye to making our many youth-oriented RAC programs (L’Taken, Machon Kaplan, etc.) even better than they already are. Back here in DC, the LAs were zipping around from congressional hearings to mark-ups to meetings to briefings on Israel, voting rights, religious freedom and more.

A Comparative View of Elder Abuse in the U.S. and Israel

I spend every Tuesday at a local nursing home visiting my dear friend, Fay, a Holocaust survivor. At ninety years old, her mind is as sharp as a nail and she easily recounts the story of her life: from the horrors of the camps, to the beauty of Israel, and finally to the hard work, freedom, and challenges of America.  Each week as I ready to leave her and return to school, a look of loneliness washes over the smile on her face and I am reminded that her only other visitors are nurses and her devoted daughter who can only visit once a week.

The FDA MSM Bans: Another Form of Discrimination

If your loved one was lying in a hospital in need of a blood transfusion, would you care about the sexual orientation of the donor whose blood is going to be given to your loved one? Chances are your biggest concern would be that the blood donor is healthy, not their sexual orientation. Yet, despite the fact that someone in the United States needs blood every two seconds, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration discriminates against men who have sex with men (MSM). In 1983, the FDA instituted a policy which bans all men who have had sex with another man at any time since 1977 from donating blood. In addition, the FDA states that men who have had sex with a man in the past five years should be ruled ineligible to donate certain tissues.

“Women’s Issues” Are Everybody’s Issues: Preventing Sexual Assault is On All of Us

Tomorrow, President Obama and Vice President Biden will announce a new campaign to prevent sexual assault on college campuses. Entitled “It’s On Us,” the campaign will emphasize that it is the responsibility of every person in a community to help prevent sexual violence. Drawing on a recent report from the National Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault, the campaign strives in particular to engage male students, harnessing their potential to help prevent sexual assault by shifting peer behavior and, accordingly, community norms.

Throwing the Flag on Washington’s Team Nickname

I’m a proud native of Jacksonville, Florida, and probably the biggest fan of the Jacksonville Jaguars (Jacksonville’s NFL team) you’ll ever meet. As such, the start of fall always carries a special excitement for me because it means the start of football season, when I can see my beloved Jaguars take the field for the first time in nine months. That excitement has been extra special this year, because the Jaguars were scheduled to play in Washington this past weekend. I was able to find tickets online and so, under a beautiful autumn sky, I took the Metro with the highest of expectations for a lovely day of football.

Rabbi David Saperstein Honored with Inaugural Anne Frank Award

On Wednesday, September 17, in a ceremony held in the Member's Room of the Library of Congress, attended by ambassadors, Members of Congress, religious leaders, and others, Ambassador Rudolf Bekink of the Netherlands presented Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, with the inaugural Anne Frank Award for Human Dignity and Tolerance. The honor acknowledges those who have worked to "confront intolerance, anti-Semitism, racism, and discrimination while upholding freedom and equal rights."

"The Netherlands and the United States have been friends for more than 400 years, in part because both our nations share a respect for justice and human rights," Ambassador Bekink said after the ceremony. "Rabbi Saperstein has dedicated his life to confronting intolerance and anti-Semitism, upholding human rights, and helping people of different backgrounds understand each other. I can think of no one better qualified to receive the inaugural Anne Frank Award for Human Dignity and Tolerance."

A Promising Perspective on Religious Tolerance in the Middle East

The Jewish people have long been active in lifting up the voices of minorities and fighting for their rights and protection. Whether in the 1960s when Reform Jews supported and participated in the Civil Rights Movement or as recently as last month when the president and chief executive of the CCAR issued a statement denouncing the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities, the Reform Movement has consistently cherished opportunities to work with and support other religious, racial, or ethnic communities. With ISIS’s influence spreading in the Middle East and concern growing in the international community, one might be tempted to assume that the region is hostile to religious freedom and diversity -- the crisis of the Yazidi people has been particularly alarming. Fortunately, an article from Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs provides encouraging data about religious tolerance in the Arab World that is encouraging to all who value religious freedom.

Who Counts? A Census Report That Calls for Economic Justice In The Year To Come

As we approach Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish New Year, we will think about how we have changed from one year to the next: how we have grown, and we can do differently in the year to come. This evaluative work is also done by the federal government through the United States Census (an official count or survey of the population.) Earlier this week, the U.S. Census Bureau issued its report on Income and Poverty in the United States for the year 2013. This report presents crucial metrics that can be utilized to evaluate the past year’s policies and ultimately improve current ones for the future. This most recent census report showed some signs of positive development. The U.S’ official poverty rate declined from 15.0% in 2012 to 14.5% in 2013, indicating that there has been some reduction in poverty. The poverty rate for children under the age of 18 declined from 21.8% in 2012 to 19.9% in 2013, making 2013 the first time that the child poverty rate has declined since 2000.